Category: Featured

In California, a man is accused of a series of unprovoked attacks on homeless people. In Arizona, a Democratic congressman’s aide breaks the ankle of a Republican wearing a Make America Great Again hat. In Connecticut, a police officer has a brick thrown through his cruiser’s window; authorities say the suspect talked about hating cops.

All are acts of violence, but are they hate crimes? In a growing number of states, the answer is yes, as the definition of hate crimes expands well beyond traditional categories such as race and ethnicity, religion, national origin, gender and sexual orientation.

Buried in the anti-Semitic manifesto of the 19-year-old man who recently opened fire in a synagogue near San Diego is a sentence in which he blames Jews for “causing many to fall into sin with their role in peddling pornography.”

The former Army soldier was slumped in the back seat of a sheriff’s department squad car when Shannon Teague and Tyrone “T-bone” Anderson arrived on the scene. A couple of hours earlier, high on meth, he’d been yelling “you will die” from the front porch of a transition house for homeless veterans.

In October 2016, a 55-year-old retired software engineer with early-onset Alzheimer’s wandered out of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art as her husband used the restroom. Nancy Paulikas hasn’t been seen since.

Thomas Yackley fatally stabbed two men at a party. Kimberly LaBore took part in a home invasion that ended with one person dead. Virgil Holt killed his boss at a fast-food restaurant shortly after he’d been fired. All are among the 20 killers serving life sentences that were recently commuted by California Gov. Jerry Brown (D).

Beyond illustrating the hardships of separation, the situation the mother and daughter face also shines a light on the ramifications of a June 11 decision by U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions that reversed protections for asylum seekers who say they are fleeing domestic violence.

In Los Angeles — one of the most expensive rental markets in the country — the housing crisis is getting so severe that tenants are increasingly engaging in rent strikes, a practice from the early 1900s.

The trouble at California Polytechnic State University in San Luis Obispo began April 8, when photos of a Lambda Chi Alpha party surfaced that showed white attendees — one in blackface — flashing gang signs.